There’s numerous ways to accomplish this. If you want the windows of your current app, “App Expose” (Ctrl+Down, and then Left/Right/Up/Down to select) is what you want. If it’s all the windows, “Mission Control” (Ctrl+Up, granted you do have to click the window with the mouse) is what you want.

You can cmd+tab between applications, and cmd+~ between windows of a given application.

Why? What was so bad about it?

Not quite sure what the person is talking about really though. I am able to cmd+tab between applications, and cmd+~ between windows of an application.

So yes, you can’t alt+tab, but you can have similar functionality.

You can do the separate desktops without using a touchpad, there are keyboard shortcuts to do that.